Page 3 - Sanger Herald 3-14-19 E-edition

Random thoughts Conspiracy or just bad customer service?
•••
Most fights over open government once
pitted journalists – who wanted to shed light on government activities - against govern- ment officials who wanted to keep their actions in the dark.
However, the Freedom of Information
Act and the California Public Records Act now make it relatively easy for average citi- zens – in small towns like Sanger – to hold local government accountable by requesting public documents that show how the elected representatives are behaving and how the tax dollars are being spent.
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Our council/manager - weak mayor - form
of government in Sanger takes into account that elected council members may not have had prior public service or business expe- rience. Their willingness to serve, in fact, may be their only qualification. So, we don't expect or want them to try to manage the multi-million dollar business of local govern- ment.
We elect them to be policy makers, not managers.
Statutes prohibit council members – including the mayor - from direct manage- ment of any city employee – except the city manager, who reports to the council, is evalu- ated by the council and serves at the will of the council.
•••
Our elected representatives, mayor
Frank Gonzalez, mayor pro tem Daniel Martinez, Humberto Garza, Eli Ontiveros and Esmeralda Hurtado are our board of direc- tors.
The city manager, Tim Chapa, is our chief executive officer.
We pay their salaries. They work for us.
They are our employees.
In my OPINION
Socialism has never worked anywhere
SANGER HERALD 3A THURSDAY, MARCH 14, 2019 EDITORIAL & OPINION
By Dick Sheppard
This is National Sunshine Week.
It's a week set aside every year to remember the value of an open and transparent government, the foundation of a free society.
Dick Sheppard
We have a right and a duty to hold them accountable for learning the rules, following the rules, behaving ethically and being open and transparent about setting and carrying out policies to take good care of us – and our money.
•••
Sunshine Week is about encouraging the
chief executive officer and the board to be open and transparent.
And, in my opinion, they need a lot of encouraging because, in my opinion, this is the least transparent administration at city hall since I became editor of the Herald more than a dozen years ago.
•••
I don't buy into the conspiracy theories
that contend the council and the city manager spend their days plotting to do bad things.
I think it's more likely that, starting at the top, there is an attitude that it would be so much easier for them to get their jobs done if they didn't have to put up with us, their cus- tomers.
I don't think they believe the custom-
ers - that's us - are always right. I think they believe and treat us like we're just flat out annoying.
I think, starting at the top, there is no emphasis on good customer service, which includes good communication with custom- ers.
The planning commission meeting this evening is a great example of customers, res- idents, reacting to that kind of bad customer service.
There would be no meeting if the city planners had been properly overseen by the city manager and the city manager had been properly overseen by the city council and the planners had been made to do it right in the first place.
The city councilmembers, at the March 7 meeting were talking about their priorities for the next fiscal year and mayor pro tem Martinez asked the audience if they had any comments about them.
Nobody in the audience knew what they were.
Nobody had a copy of the priorities and they weren't projected on a screen for the audience to see.
Bad, bad customer service.
Whatever those priorities are they appar- ently don't include:
• Improve customer relations and learn to communicate better with the residents of Sanger - who are the customers.
That's all I have to say about that because I want to share the comments about bad cus- tomer service by Dr. Jerry Valadez of SAM Academy. He couldn't be at the meeting so he submitted them to the council in writing.
However, a couple of others at the meet- ing complained about the same thing - and,
by the way - there was still nothing posted on the city website on Tuesday when I wrote this about the sudden and unexpected cancella- tion of the oversight meeting.
I think this administration is a lot like the bad drivers in Sanger who don't use their turn signals.
They apparently just don't think it's all that important for us to know which direction they're going to turn.
Please direct your questions or comments to sangerherald@gmail.com.
Comments by Jerry Valadez of SAM Academy about Measure S concerns
Dear Mayor Gonzalez and members of the City of Sanger Council:
I am sorry not to be here [March 7 city council meeting] in person, but I am in San Francisco to meet with foundations in hopes of bringing resources to Sanger for our kids. My concern is with the Measure S process, or lack of process that includes the COC [Citizens Oversight Committee] as should be. Concerns:
1. COCmeetingofMarch5cancelled without adequate public notice. Nothing
posted on website. Several of us made special arrangements to attend the meeting only to find it cancelled.
2. The revised Measure S grant guidelines were revised by City staff without input of CoC. Last three COC meetings had no agenda item regarding grants.
3. City staff have made the decision to not allow funding to go to previous grant awardees. This is a prejudicial statement as
See MEASURE S CONCERNS, page 6A
it's been tried!
By Fred Hall
eschewed traditional teaching for their more “enlightened” methods.
Many of those new standards, which are espoused in the new California Healthy Youth Act now include a regimen of LGBTQ- inclusive history standards. Beginning in 2017, California fourth graders are being taught that Sally Ride was the first female lesbian astronaut, Charley Parkhurst was a transgender stagecoach driver in the 1880's and George Takei is a famous gay activ-
ist fighting for marriage equality. There appears to be no time to teach real history. The legacies involved in building this great country are not being passed down to new generations.
As shameful as the way our schools are failing to teach history, the story of the failure with reading and math. National Assessment of Education Progress reports that 2/3's of eighth graders were reported
as ranked below proficient in both math and reading. The numbers which we reviewed indicate it gets even worse during the high schoolyears. Bythetimetheygraduateonly about 4 in 10 high school seniors are profi- cientinreadingandmath. Withthatpitiful base limiting any possibility for success, we then send them off to college where a staff of propagandist professors snow them with a curriculum of political correctness.
Predictably, the diploma mill spits them out neither possessing the talent nor skills toreallymakealivingatmuchofanything. They have, however, been thoroughly mari- nated in correct political thought and are filled with misguided ideas of America, seen through academic lenses. They are then driven to enter the world of politics and are chomping at the bit to put all those wonder- ful ideas their professor provided into action. That's especially dangerous because they know nothing of history and are unable to evaluate that which they are proposing.
That seems pretty much to me how we arrived at this ugly spot in history where
the future of this Democratic society hangs in the balance thanks to a wrong-headed approach by a government full of bureau- crats who wanted to be in charge of our edu- cational system and the people our politicians put in charge of the asylum.
Yes, perhaps it seems simplistic, but we think the best way is to return control of
our broken educational system to the people with most at stake—the parents who have children in those schools. Every time gov- ernment gets involved with programs like Common Core and The California Healthy Youth Act, one can bet things will go wrong. Government is systemically incapable of run- ning anything, much less the education of our children.
If control is not soon returned to the par- ents, we can expect another generation of wrong-headed politicians with unworkable schemes.
But, as always, that's only one man's opin- ion.
In addition to the Sanger Herald, Publisher Fred Hall oversees two other Mid Valley Publishing newspapers - Reedley Exponent, and Dinuba Sentinel. He can be contacted by phone at (559) 638-2244 or by email at fred@ midvalleypublishing.com.
Does anyone reading this
really believe that the gov-
ernment and its hundreds
of thousands of bureaucrats
really do a better job of
managing anything than
those in the private sec-
tor? Howcanthey,when
government creates noth-
ing? Whendecisionsaremade,theydonot put at risk their own money. The funds with which they play so fast and loose have all been co-opted from hard working taxpayers. Their primary construct is to keep the people of the country safe and they refuse to even recognize the crisis on our Southern border because of petty internal political infighting.
There was, once upon a time, a period when our military was the exception to gov- ernment incompetency but it has become infected with political correctness which bringsintoquestioncombatreadiness. Our military is becoming one huge social experi- ment which is contrary to my once being told that their job was to break things and win wars.
Now, they're virtually required to get per- mission from a lawyer before they can even shootanyone. Heavenonlyknowshowmuch we love our soldiers but their missions are often clouded by the corruption and malfea- sanceoftheirleadership. Fundsappropri- ated by Congress for military preparedness are instead being used to pay for transgender services for young people as a method to
get the government to pay for transgender operations.
Now that we've taken a cursory look at how inefficient and wasteful our politicians are in Sacramento and Washington, perhaps we need to take a realistic look at the “bill
of goods” being offered by the Socialist Democrat party when they want to put them- selves in charge of everything! This new “woke” generation of Socialist Democrats wants to in charge of everything Americans areallowedtodo. Theirpanderingwith fantastic new “entitlements” brings with it a precipitous reductions in our freedoms.
One of the best questions which we could ask of ourselves is, how did we ever get to the point in America where socialism is now increasingly seen as an acceptable alterna- tivetocapitalism? Forthemoststraight forward answer to that question one has only to look at the education of the last three generations of young Americans who passed through our schools and university systems.
We can begin with one undeniable prem- ise: SOCIALISMHASNEVERWORKED ANYWHERE IT HAS BEEN TRIED!
Margaret Thatcher had it exactly right when she said that socialism was fine until you run out of other people's money!
Everything we hear being espoused by the Democrat party today is so counter intuitive to the American system and the American way of thinking, which made this country asgreatasitis,leavingonetoworry. We feel that the gravity of the situation being advanced by such misguided thinking has to be placed directly at the door of our current system of education which seems to have
Fred Hall
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